One Day
by Lanie McCoy
Summary: Often when time moves forward, we realize that there are people in this world who we simply cannot trust or believe. Hiei reveals his feelings about Kurama and they certainly aren't loving.


**Disclaimer: Thai food is good, ne? And I can tell you something: nothing this good should be eaten over a computer. X.X**

**Aw, I'm just screwing with everyone's poor heads, aren't I? What can I say, blame Inaho and Inaho's friend for handing over the idea that Kurama and Hiei may not actually be that close.**

_One Day_

My days are so monotonous now.

Everything has a method to the madness and nothing surprises me anymore.

It wasn't always this way; it was never this way in the past. But this isn't the past, is it? No, this is the present, this is the now. This is the future.

Am I confusing you? Good. Think of it as my payback, you bastard.

Oh, now, that's not very fair of me, I suppose. Calling you a bastard when you haven't done anything wrong. But you have done something, don't you see? You've left me here, dying on the inside where nobody can see it and nobody can help. I hate you. I hate you and I hope that when you die, I'm there to watch. Hell, I hope I'm the one to drain the last of your blood. The last divine joke. My ultimate revenge.

I bet you didn't know I was so sadistic. We all know youkai are sadomasochistic asses, loving the thrill of blood and pain and torment and hate. But you, all of you, thought that I'd changed. I know you did. Don't deny it.

You may have changed, but I ask you: can one really alter who they are inside without forging a new shell? That's all you did, you know. Bought yourself a little more time with a new outer casing for your sadomasochistic soul, your soul that's just like the rest of us. Your soul that loves to watch blood flow from an open wound and doesn't care where that wound resides.

I'm not lucky like you. I can't just pack up and snatch some unborn child's half-empty body. I'm a thief of objects, not lives. And I thought you were, too.

You think it's odd, don't you? That I would seemingly care so much for some pathetic little ningen child. Truly I don't care for the boy. I care for you, in an odd sense, and I care that you stole another creature's life. Not killed it; this I could understand, for I have done the same. You didn't take it and let it die in your hand. No, that would be too good for you. You took it and let it writhe, let it squirm and shout and plead for freedom, and then you made it dance.

You warped it to suit your own twisted game.

I used to think you were good. Deep down, buried under all that fakery and all those lies.

I guess all I needed was some time.

Because time has a nasty habit of moving on, even if it leaves us behind. Fucking with our lives as it moves forward in its sinful way. And time moving on gives us chance after chance to learn things about each other and ourselves, and the rolling of time's wicked dice taught me more than I could ever want to know.

You, mostly. I learned that you didn't just sneak on in and save some poor, doomed child by bonding your soul to his. No, you swooped down like a carnivorous hawk and snatched up your refuge, tying your souls together and bonding this kid to a fate he never should have been forced into because you were selfish. Yes, that's what I said: you were selfish. You wanted to save yourself, and you stole this kid's life from him because of that.

I know how you pass it off. "Oh, this is not a possession, it's a merger, and we are part of each other. I saved this child from being a miscarriage. I give him strength and intelligence far beyond what his ningen existence would allow him." I hear all that, and it makes me ill. You make me sick.

You didn't save the kid, you trapped him. A fox cornering his prey, you ensnared this defenseless boy and took his life from him. Then you had the nerve to pretend you had done him a favor. I cannot stand to hear this from you.

I cannot bear to hear these lies.

I, the sinner, the skeptic, the deceiver, I cannot bear to hear these lies, and it is hypocritical, you might say. I have lied in the past, you know. To survive, I have done horrible, unspeakable things. You have too, I'm certain. All creatures of Makai harbor black pasts they would rather not remember; it is our way.

Just as we are all sadomasochistic, just as we are all shadows with blackened pasts, we are also creatures of our own means, and we do lie and twist our words often. I would tell the same story in ten different ways to five different people if I knew it was what they wanted to hear.

But more than being simply unable to hear these lies, for there must be more—as I've said, and as you know, I am the sinner, the skeptic, the liar.

No, the problem is that I cannot bear to hear them from you.

You who are the silver kitsune, the object of everyone's desires and the perfect son, the perfect student, the perfect fighter. You who are the perfect everything. And in being perfect in everything, you are something you never would have wanted, never could have wanted. You are the perfect lie.

Unless you did want it. Oh, I understand. You did want it. I can see it clearly now. You, player of games, toying with minds, tearing down souls, you intended this. You orchestrated it all from the start.

Except for one thing. You never meant for the ningen concept of emotion to leak its way into your heart. You meant to leave, didn't you? You meant not only to leave, but to sadden the family and leave them broken at the mysterious loss of their precious son. Your brilliant master plan backfired on you when the mother showed you kindness.

You, who has all the answers, must be wracking your brain now, trying to realize why I am so bored, my days so repetitive. It's because of you.

You are not repetitive, of course. That is not you. You are new and different all the time, and every day with you brings a new adventure or a new fact of some sort. But what now? Now, now that you're…

Gone.

You bastard.

You broke the rules.

You're not allowed to just get up and leave.

I hate you.

I know what you're expecting now—you're sitting there in your prim little chair, your hands folded neatly on your lap, your patient emerald eyes watching me with every understanding and every condolence, waiting for me to say that what I hate most about you is the fact that I love you. Well, you know what? Not everybody loves you. You aren't perfect. You have your flaws. You're commonplace, just like the rest of us.

It hurts, doesn't it? It hurts to hear that you aren't unique. Hurts to hear your hands are covered with just as much blood as the rest of us, that you've stolen just as many lives and torn down just as many walls. It hurts, makes you bleed inside, and it makes you _feel_.

Don't think I don't know. Don't think I don't know that you've never told the truth once in your life. Not once in your gods-forsaken, left-for-dead, half-fake life.

Life is a funny word that way. Any scientist of any sort would tell you that you are alive; your heart beats soundly, your breath flows with the wind and you are alive. But I know different. You lying, cheating bastard. You aren't alive. You haven't been alive since the day you were born. And even then, I'm suspicious.

If you aren't alive because of your deceit, what does that say for me? That I'm less than alive? Less than dead? I am some nameless void taking up a cavity of space that could be used for better things.

And it's all. Your. Fault.

I hate you.

You make me learn things about myself, about the people I live around, and I don't want any of it. It was you who made me realize that I am not worthy of this world, that I am not worthy of the beautiful sister who was bestowed upon me, that I am not worthy of the kindness showed to me by the people who call themselves my friends.

I am simply a waste of the precious resources of this world, and I do not belong.

You don't belong.

Do we belong together in that way? In the fact that neither of us truly has a home? I had left you, supposedly, for the lust of power, the thrill of being at the top, but I would have come back. One day. Maybe not in your lifetime, but someday, I would have returned. You didn't believe me when I told you that. You thought I'd left forever, and maybe to you, I had.

You are selfish, and you would not care if I came back if I did not come to see you. If I were to come back here, to this very city, to this very street, this very house, this very room, and you were not here, you would not care. It would not matter that I had made the effort to return because you were not here to see it, and you are selfish that way.

But I would have come back to this world one day, and that is what matters.

Why would I return? I don't know.

Why would I return to see some random ningen living in this house where I used to visit you? Sentiment, maybe.

Why would I return to this house long after you had died? Houses cannot lie, but show me things as I remember them.

Why does any of this matter?

It really doesn't, you might say.

But I like to think that somebody will care.

One day.

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Note: this is similar to "Carry On," but Hiei is more cynical than Kurama was because Hiei is a darker character (up front, anyway, but we won't get into the technicalities and psychology of that now). Whereas Kurama was reflecting to himself, maybe talking to himself or writing in a journal, Hiei is speaking to Kurama. He's realizing things as he speaks and he's angry. Kurama is angry, but more than that he's sad. Hiei is sad, too, but his anger is overshadowing that sadness. Vice versa.


End file.
